Planting Garlic for a Good Home Supply

Planting Garlic - care and selection for growing your own garlic at home.

Garlic is such a valuable herb. If you like garlic it's perhaps not such a bad idea to grow some of your own.

Garlic planting is not especially tricky and garlic does not occupy very much space so those are perhaps more good reasons to plant some for home growing.

Also, if you grow your own garlic plants you should no longer have to accept second best supermarket varieties for your culinary needs. You can grow your garlic plants and you can find a far wider ranger of types than will be available to you in ordinary greengrocers and supermarkets.

"Wet neck" or "soft neck" varieties, for example don't store so well so you generally won't find them in the shops. But they are some of the best garlic plants to grow if taste is your priority. Planting garlic in your home patch is perhaps the best way to ensure you get tasty and organic cloves. The other way is to look for local garlic in farmers' markets.

Elephant garlic is a popular variety and it certainly looks impressive. I find the taste is rather weak compared to smaller types and the cloves are relatively expensive to buy for planting. They are easy enough to grow. In fact, they produce a larger yield for the space occupied, so some people may find them a good choice. Elephant garlic is thought to be a cultivar of garlic originating in the eastern Mediterranean area. It was popularised by a nurseryman from Oregon in the 1940s.

So what steps do you need for your own garlic planting heaven?

The first and most important thing is to research a good source of garlic cloves for home planting. It is just no use relying on recycled, sprouted garlic cloves from your local supermarket. If they grow at all, they will almost certainly be small and distorted. One case where recycling does not do!

Nevertheless, one of my neighbours claims to get good results doing just that - planting garlic cloves from commercially grown supermarket specimens, so I'll have to try this too.

If you look online there are several reputable garlic farms which specialise in selling garlic for home planting. You can also buy your cloves for home growing garlic in the larger garden centres. Be careful. I've been fooled before now into parting with good cash for sub-standard stock, so now I make a few checks before I buy.

Much of the seedstock on offer in catalogues is the relatively short lived types which will only store up to about Christmas. I believe you can buy good, inexpensive stock from France but I haven't tried this yet.

Picture: When planting garlic make sure you buy good firm cloves or bulbs

If the garlic cloves are packaged, it is best to open the packaging to have a look at the quality of what you are buying. If the packaging is see-through look carefully to see that the cloves show no signs of rot or shrivelling. They should be plump and firm. It does not matter if t...

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